I’m sure I don’t have to remind you about the bizarre “Peloton Wife” ad that aired a couple of months ago, but I’m going to anyway. The ad tells the story of a young, beautiful, thin woman who’s presented with a Peloton trainer by her husband. We see a series of videos, shot by said wife, basically showing how miserable she is using the bike, but how it becomes more rewarding over time, and then the end of the ad reveals that the videos are actually a compilation that she’s prepared for her husband over the course of the year to thank him for her gift and the personal growth that has come of it.
People were unimpressed. A thin woman thanking her husband for a year of misery after he bought her a fitness product came across, to some consumers, as body-shaming and sexist. “Thanks, honey. I hated it in the beginning, but now I know you were only doing it for my own good” — yeah, that’s not creepy. Peloton’s value dropped by $942 million in one day after the public started discussing exactly how creepy it was. And then Peloton’s handling of the whole thing was… suboptimal, talking about how much people actually love their product and blaming everyone who didn’t like the ad for just not understanding it. (One good thing that came of it? An ad from Aviation gin giving the Peloton Wife a hard-earned cocktail.)
Clearly, mistakes were made. But what became a PR disaster for Peloton can be a learning experience for us. Here are three big takeaways that we, as advertising professionals, can embrace to avoid a Peloton disaster of our own.
1. Remember that it’s not about you — it’s about your audience
Okay, there’s no way of knowing exactly who, within the advertising process, may or may not have thought it was all about them and not the consumer. But we know that someone in the main office did, because a spokesperson said, “While we’re disappointed in how some have misinterpreted this commercial, we are encouraged by — and grateful for — the outpouring of support we’ve received from those who understand what we were trying to communicate.” The statement also included testimonials from fans who love the product and the ads, as if to demonstrate that clearly, the ads were great and anyone who didn’t like it was just a stupidhead.
Oh, honey, no. That’s not how advertising works. Our job is to reach out to the client, speaking their language, and make them understand our message, not to expect them to do the heavy lifting of decoding our messaging to figure out what we actually meant. Regardless of what we want them to feel, or how we want them to think, they’re going to think and feel the way they think and feel, and that’s the context we’re going to have to work from.
If the consumer doesn’t understand our message as we want it understood, it’s because we did something wrong — used off-putting imagery, vague copy, not doing enough research to know what sore spots not to hit, or so many other things that could stand between how we say it and how the consumer hears it. (The technical term is semantic noise, btw. Learning!) The failure was not on the consumer’s end.
2. Know your audience. Like, a lot.
What semantic noise got in the way of Peloton’s intended message? The one where no woman wants to get a Honey, You Should Become Less Fat machine from one’s partner as a holiday gift. If the ad had made it clearer up front that the woman had been really, really wanting a Peloton, and sure, she was nervous about it (for whatever reason), but she was excited about the opportunity to push herself and see what she could accomplish, it would have been great. Instead, you get a woman documenting her miserable year of using the exercise bike her husband bought for her, ending with her exuberant thanks for his implication that she was a fatty-fat-fat (which, in light of the rest of the ad, came across as a little bit Stockholm syndrome-y, if you ask me).
Really, deeply know your audience — both the things that will reach them and the things that will get in the way of that — so you can hit the high points and avoid even the subtlest of sore spots that will shut them down. Know them well enough to step away from your own familiarity with the concept and see it from the eyes of someone who hasn’t been sitting in on the creative process. We know the wife was supposed to love the bike and the journey was supposed to be challenging but rewarding — but standing in the designer cycling shoes of our audience, are we confident that they know it?
One little change, making it clear that the gift was a fulfillment of a wish rather than a passive-aggressive comment on her need to work out, could have avoided (or at least dulled the edges of) the entire controversy.
3. Always keep your brand in mind
I mean, that one should seem obvious, but apparently it isn’t?
When in December, a few of Peloton’s internal documents made their way into the public eye, they revealed something telling: Peloton’s team knew better than to make an ad like this. The leaked RFPs, pitch overview, and brand positioning deck were… pretty nice, actually. Peloton clearly knew their consumer base, knew what they’d respond to, knew what they were looking for and how this product could meet their needs. Past ads, and even ads that’s run since the Stockholm Cyclist debacle, indicate that they know what they should be doing, and they do it well.
With all of that going for you, why step away from it for this incongruous ad? Nothing about the Peloton Wife ad conveys the focus on community, and on “making the hard work enjoyable,” conveyed in the brand documents. A solo woman toiling away miserably on her $2,000 bike in the solitude of her living room stands in total opposition to that more positive, encouraging positioning. Why step away from that?
(No, I’m serious. Why?)
I’m not saying it’s never okay to step out of an established campaign and do something attention-grabbing — artificially limiting ourselves with a mindless attachment to an existing concept serves no one. Just make sure you stay on brand. Make sure your out-of-campaign executions continue to reinforce the spirit and personality of the brand that help it connect with your audience. Or, if you’re actually working to remodel your brand, do it in a deliberate, strategic way. (And probably don’t change to Wife Who’s Probably Flashing Us Secret Hand Signals We Aren’t Noticing.)
Save yourself.
In the end, Peloton isn’t likely to suffer permanent damage from the ad debacle — it started to regain its lost stock value shortly after its initial post-controversy plummet, and new offers like a membership discount for Apple Watch and Amazon Fire users are likely to better entice potential customers who might be reluctant to drop $480 on a year of apparent Pelotorture. But they wouldn’t have had to make a comeback if they hadn’t had a debacle in the first place.
Know your brand, know your audience, and always take responsibility for your work. And maybe don’t depict your customers as miserable when they’re using your product. So that’s four tips. Go forth and avoid disasters.